Room 2

Paul Hardy

Study for Ways to Live

EXHIBITION /
SEPTEMBER 6 TO OCTOBER 12, 2019

OPENING /
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 6, 8PM

ARTIST TALK /
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 5H30PM

Let us enter the threshold:
A soft gaseous light hovers like fog
as a delicate reminder of the physicality of space.
Subtle differentiations in hues oscillate with intention.
Dusty pinks and rusted blues; this is the colour of air.

Let us contend with the surface:
Ripples trace the echo of a singular gesture.
A force undefined and out of frame.
Like a pebble entering water and disappearing into its depths.
The reverberating substratum reveals itself as an afterimage of sequential folds.

Let us praise the shadow:
That ephemeral entity which delineates the contours of materiality.
Defining creases and articulating silhouettes.
Empty, Silent, Transparent.
Making visible the essential with efficiency and grace.

Let us do away with the anecdotal:
And consider the possibility of a spiritual dimension to abstraction.
Encountered here as a series of open-ended propositions.
This is the evidence left in the wake of a commitment to questioning.
Within the boundaries of an uncompromised space.

Study for Ways to Live is a continuation of the discursive and despecified approach to painting the artist has pursued in recent years. An installation of light forms an affective, interior environment in which a variety of painterly propositions commune. Optically charged abstractions mirror and absorb our bodily vibrations, while figurative apparitions watch as their boundaries slip. Evolving in parallel to research surrounding vibrational medicine and an ongoing multi-dimensional investigation of painting, Study for Ways to Live explores ideas of  energy, healing, and questions how we may navigate and mend a densely loaded and fragmented existence. Through these various experiential objects and poetic cyphers, a sensuous, yet pathos-laden charge is felt as screens and palimpsests question how we look, how perception is shaped, and how meaning is made and lost.

- Iliana Antonova & Paul Hardy 

 



BIO
Paul Hardy
(b. 1980, Summerside PEI, live and works in Montréal) creates ambiguous and abstracted paintings characterized by relentless material explorations and constant searching. Together, they move through and map out several diverging historical, personal, and painterly references into a unique vision that investigates the nature of creative processes, the act of painting, and notions of selfhood. 

Hardy holds an MFA from Concordia University and a BA from Université de Moncton. He was a finalist in the RBC painting competition, participated in the Symposium international d'art contemporain de Baie-Saint-Paul, and was an artist in residence at Artscape Gibraltar Point (Toronto Islands) and RUDAIR in Laxarby, Sweden. He has presented solo exhibitions at Parisian Laundry and has participated in group exhibitions throughout Canada. He has received grants from the Canada Council for the Arts and the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec. 

The artist would like to thank Centre CLARK, Atelier CLARK, Iliana Antonova, Carlo Della Motta, Celia Perrin Sidarous, Mathieu Gaudet, Martin Schop and Grier Edmundson, as well as acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts.